The constable hesitated; I could see him wrestling with his dwindling self-assurance, still suspicious, but intimidated by the stronger personality.

‘Well?’ Fanny demanded impatiently. ‘Must we be importuned by these vulgar onlookers? Is my daughter an exhibit to be stared at?’ With a superb and righteous fury she turned on the crowd.

‘Go away!’ she commanded. ‘Go on, move! I said move!’ A number of people at the edge of the scene began to shift uneasily and drift away; only the military gentleman held his ground.

‘I demand to know…’ he began.

Fanny set her hands on her hips and took a step forwards.

‘Now look here…’

Fanny took another step. Their faces were nearly touching. She whispered something, very quietly.

The military gentleman jumped as if he had been stung and moved away hurriedly, pausing only to look back over his shoulder at Fanny with an expression of almost superstitious alarm. Then she joined us again, a smile of sublime unconcern on her face.

‘That, officer,’ she said, ‘is how it is done.’ Then, as the constable seemed dissastisfied, she continued: ‘My daughter has a delicate constitution, officer, and is upset by the slightest thing. I warned my son-in-law not to take her to the fair, but he would go against my advice. And because he is most ill equipped to deal with a young lady in her condition…’

‘Ah?’ said the constable.

‘Yes. My daughter is expecting a child,’ said Fanny sweetly.

The constable blushed and scribbled something meaningless in his notebook. Struggling to maintain his dignity, he turned to Effie.

‘I’m very sorry, ma’am,’ he said. ‘Just doin’ my duty. You are this lady’s daughter?’

Effie nodded.

‘And this gentleman’s wife?’

‘Of course.’

‘Would you mind giving me your name, please, ma’am?’ Effie flinched almost imperceptibly. I noticed, but did not think the constable did, so quick was her recovery.

‘Marta,’ she said, continuing in a stronger voice, ‘Marta.’ And, turning towards Fanny with a smile, Effie put her arm around the older woman’s waist and began suddenly, inexplicably, to laugh.

Fanny Miller had been a part of my life for years, and I respected her as I have done no other woman. She was ten years older than I, good-looking in a heavy kind of style, with a razor-sharp intelligence and a masculine, devouring ambition. Like myself, she was a Jack-of-all-trades; her mother was a country girl turned Haymarket slut and had given Fanny to that oldest of professions by the time she was thirteen. Four years later the mother was dead and Fanny was on her own, all teeth and claws against the world into which she had been thrown. She was avid to get on and, in the years which followed, she learned how to read, to write, to pick pockets and locks, to fight with a razor or with her fists, to make medicines and poisons, to talk like a lady-though she never quite lost her mother’s West Country burr-and drink like a man. Above all she learned to despise men, to ferret out their weaknesses and use them, and soon enough she was able to graduate from selling herself to selling others.

Fanny had earned her money in a dozen ways, both honest and dishonest: by singing in the vaudeville, by telling fortunes in a travelling fair, by selling fake rheumatism cures, by blackmail, by theft, by fraud. When I met her she was already in charge of her own establishment, with maybe a dozen girls in her stable. Pretty, all of them; but none of them could have competed with Fanny. She was tall, almost as tall as I am, with strong, rounded arms, broad shoulders and rolling curves all free from corsets and stays. She had bright amber eyes, like a cat’s, and a profusion of brassy hair which she wore in a complicated knot at the back of her head. But Fanny wasn’t for sale, not at any price. Foolishly, I insisted-there’s a price and a line for every woman, or so I thought-and she struck at me just like a cat, the arc of her ivory straight-razor leaping towards me with a fluid grace, deliberately missing me by half an inch. She was quick-I never even saw her pull the razor from her pocket-and I still remember the way she looked at me, snapping the wicked blade shut again and returning it to her skirts, saying, ‘I like you, Mose. I really do. But forget yourself again, and I’ll take your face off. Understand?’ And all that without a tremor in her voice or a quickening of the heart.

Sometimes I think that if Fanny Miller ever had a heart she must have left it along the way with all the rest of the useless flotsam of her life; certainly, by the time we met, she was steel through and through. I never saw her falter. Never. And now she had returned, my personal daemon, unchanged but for a streak of grey in her luxuriant hair, to take in hand my little crisis.

I was not altogether pleased, although Fanny had undoubtedly saved me from some unpleasantness; I suppose I simply don’t like being indebted to a woman. Besides, I was already running my own masquerade with Effie, and it disturbed me that Fanny knew it; she was the type to turn every situation to her own advantage, and I did not like the almost instinctive way in which Effie had clung to her, almost as if she were indeed Fanny’s daughter. However, I said nothing until we had left the green and were back on the Islington Road where I could hail a fly and be off before I had to give any tedious explanations. I glanced at Fanny, still arm-in-arm with Effie, and cautiously began to search for my role.

‘A long time since we last met, Fanny,’ I said idly. ‘How are you faring nowadays?’

‘Come-day, go-day,’ she replied, with a smile.

‘Business?’

‘I’d say business were fine.’ Still the smile, mocking, as if she knew she was hiding something from me. Turning to Effie, she levelled the smile at her, their faces intimately close. ‘You’ll excuse me, miss, if I alarmed you back there,’ she said cheerfully, ‘but I could see you didn’t want the commotion, and I guess you might not want anyone to recognize you.’ A knowing, sidewards glance at me. I shifted uneasily before it. What did she know? What game was she playing?

‘Our guardian angel,’ I commented, trying to keep the sourness out of my voice. ‘Effie, this is Epiphany Miller. Fanny, this is Effie Chester.’

‘I know. I know your husband well,’ said Fanny. That made me start, but Effie did not react.

‘Oh, modelling,’ she said. She was still staring at Fanny with a kind of stupid intensity and, for the first time, I found myself out of all patience with her. I was about to make a sharp comment when she roused herself abruptly.

‘Why did you call me that?’ she asked.

‘Call you what, my dear?’ said Fanny comfortably.

‘Marta.’

‘Oh, that? It was just the first name which came into my head.’

I’m damned if I knew what her game was. I could see no reason why she should want to befriend Effie, who was as unlike her as a woman can be, nor why she should invite us to her house; but she did and, despite the black looks I levelled at her, Effie agreed. I was beside myself; I knew where Fanny lived; she had a house in Maida Vale, near the canal, consisting of her own rooms and the lodgings of the dozen or so girls who lived under her protection-not the kind of place I wanted to be recognized in with Effie, unless I wanted all my careful liaising with Henry to be wasted.

‘Really, Effie, I think we should be getting you home, don’t you think?’ I said pointedly.

‘Rubbish!’ answered Fanny. ‘It’s only three o’clock. There’s plenty of time for a cup of tea and a bite to eat.’

‘I really don’t think-’

‘I’d like to come,’ interrupted Effie with a defiant look in her eye. ‘If Mose wants to leave now, let him. I’ll come home presently.’

Damn her impudence!

‘I can’t let you jaunt about London on your own!’

‘I won’t be on my own. I’ll be with Miss Miller.’